Bob Dylan: Cooler Than All of Us for 75 Years

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Bob Dylan turns 75 today, a milestone for someone who’s lived a hundred lives. There was the folk-purist phase, the electric era (which we all know well), that time he went Christian rock, and the country-crooner period that blessed us with “Lay, Lady, Lay," just to name a few. It’s part of the reason we love the guy: He’s constantly reinventing himself. (The other part involves his music, of course.) No era is quite as telling, though, as those fleeting months between 1964 to 1965, when Dylan decided to shed his folk persona in search of something a little more rock ’n’ roll.
Photographer Daniel Kramer was along for the ride, capturing intimate images of a remarkable period of transition. Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day compiles nearly 200 of those moments, many published for the first time. They're photos of a man in constant motion: an aloof Dylan climbing a tree in Woodstock, shooting pool upstate, hanging out backstage with Joan Baez—and recording what would become two of the most influential rock albums of all time, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. (Kramer shot those covers, by the way.) “Freewheeling" would be the wrong word. He knows exactly where he’s going.

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